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Republican v.nd Independent Head-qi u i ei 
i 66 Washing! , Bosto ful 

iJ/y flfear iSiir •• — 

We enclose with this a copy of the address adopted by the Nati 
Conference of Republicans and Independents, held at New Vorl 
This address was adopted unanimously, and we send it to you as the 
official utterance of the Conference. 

DARWIN E. WARE, Chairman Ex. Com. 

MOSES WILLIAMS, Secretary. 

Executive Committee. 

William H. Forbes, Samuel Hoar, Moorrleld Storey, Phineas Pierce, 
Jabez Fox, George V. Leverett, F. F. Raymond, 2d, Charles 1'. ! 
Stephen M. Weld, Samuel M. Quincy, Winslow Warren, Geo. Fred. 
Williams, Charles C. Jackson, Archibald M. Howe, A. J. C. Sowdon. 



ADDRESS. 

To our Fellow Citizens of the United States : — 

The paramount issue of the Presidential election of this year is moral 
rather than political. It concerns the national honor and character and 
honesty of administration rather than the general policies of government, 
upon which the platforms of the two parties do not essentially differ. 
No position taken by one platform is seriously traversed by the other. 
Both evidently contemplate a general agreement of public opinion upon 
subjects which have been long in controversy, and indicate an unwilling- 
ness to declare, upon other and cardinal questions, views which in the 
present condition of opinion might seriously disturb the parties within 
themselves. Parties indeed now cohere mainly by habit and tradition ; 
and, since the great issues which have divided them have been la 
settled, the most vital political activity has been the endeavor of good 
citizens, in both parties, to adjust them to living issues, and to make them 
effective agencies of political progress and reform. The indispensable 
necessity of this course has long been apparent ; for, in a time of pro- 
found peace at home and abroad, the most threatening national peril is an 
insidious political corruption, a mercenary and demoralizing spirit and 



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tendency, the result of what is well described by Senator Hoar, of Massa- 
chusetts, as the shameless doctrine " that the true way by which power 
should be gained in the Republic is to bribe the people with the offices 
created for their service, and the true end for which it should be used 
when gained is the promotion of selfish ambition and the gratification of 
personal revenge." But this doctrine naturally has produced results which 
are still more alarming. The corrupt spirit and tendency have so rapidly 
developed that they seek political power not only to gratify ambition and 
revenge, but to promote private gain. They deride appeals to the public 
conscience, defend the soiled reputations of public men by the bold asser- 
tion that all public men are equally guilty, declare that success in obtaining 
eminent position disposes of every imputation and suspicion of wrong- 
doing, and, despising all practical measures to reform the system of 
official patronage which fosters dishonest politics, make a great party 
nominally responsible for prolonged and monstrous fraud, and proclaim 
that it is the duty of every citizen who, for great and beneficent ends, has 
habitually supported a party, to regard the success of the party at an 
election, without regard to the character of those whom it selects as its 
executive agents, to be a supreme national necessity. A tendency more 
fatal to the public welfare cannot be conceived ; and when, by public 
indifference or misunderstanding, this corrupt spirit is able to demand that 
the country shall approve it by according to it the highest honor in its 
gift, every patriotic citizen must perceive that no duty could be more 
pressing, vital, and imperative than that of baffling and defeating the 
demand. 

If the Republican Convention had presented a candidate whos-e char- 
acter and career were the pledge of a resolute contest with the tendencies 
that we have described, if they had foretold a stern dealing with political 
corruption and a vigorous correction of the vast abuses which the long 
and undisturbed tenure of power by any party is sure to breed, if the 
success of the candidate had promised inflexible honesty of administration, 
purification of the government, and elevation of the party standard, every 
Republican voter would gladly have supported the nomination. But these 
are precisely the anticipations which the nomination forbids. It offers 
a candidate who is an unfit leader, shown by his own words and his 
acknowledged acts, which are of official record, to be unworthy of respect 
and confidence ; who has traded upon his official trust for his pecuniary 
gain ; a representative of men, methods, and conduct which the public 
conscience condemns, and which illustrate the very evils which honest 
men would reform. Such a nomination does not promise in the executive 
chair, inflexible official integrity, calm and wise judgment, a sole regard 
for the public welfare, and an unshrinking determination to promote 
reform in the civil service, and ceaselessly to pursue and punish public 
robbers of every kind and degree. Independent voters have generally 
supported Republican nominations, as more surely promising reform than 
those of the Democratic party. Independents, however, cannot support 
a nomination which is the culmination of the tendency that they would 
t. Republicans cannot hope that, under such leadership as we have 
mentioned, die abuses of the past can be corrected or the party reformed. 
We are very proud of the great record and services of the Republican 
party, but not with our consent or connivance shall that record be disgraced. 

Every party must be constantly renewed by the intelligent indepen- 
dence of its own members, or it will sink from an agency to secure good 



government into a remorseless despotism. Thi Republican part) fir I 
sprang from a moral sentiment It was the part) ol political morality and 
ol personal liberty. It appealed directly to the < oi the citizen. 

But, like all panics, it was a political agen< y, nol to I"- worshipped, but to 
l"' carefully held to the spirit and purposes in which and for whi< h it was 
organized. "I do not know." said Mr. Seward thirty years ago, when he 
left the Whig party to join the Republicans, "I do not know thai it will 
always or even long preserve its courage, its moderation, and its consist- 
ency. It' it shall do so, it will se< ure .iwd save the country. It it. too, shall 
become unfaithful, as all preceding parties have done, it will without sor- 
row or regret on my part perish as they are perishing, and will give place 
to another truer and better one." This warning must not be forgotten. 
It is with profound conviction of its wisdom that Republicans faithful to 
their party, hut holding with the great Republican fathers that political 
morality and purity of administration arc more precious than party, are 
now constrained to oppose the Republican Presidential nomination in the 
interest of what they believe to be pure Republicanism, the public welfare 
and the honor of the American name. 

The Republican nomination has for the time superseded all other 
issues by raising the question of official honesty. This question cannot he- 
avoided except upon the plea that the official character of the candii 
need not be considered, and that, in order to secure a part\ President, the 
members of a party ought to vote for any candidate who has been reg- 
ularly nominated. This is a plea beyond which party madness cannot go. 
Acquiescence in it would require the surrender of the self-respect of every 
voter. There could be no candidate so unfit that this plea would not 
demand his support ; and Republican success, justified by an argument 
which defies the public conscience, would be the overthrow of the vital 
principle of the party, and show that the spirit and character which 
created its great traditions are rapidly perishing. 

Upon the practical questions of tariff and finance and other questions 
upon which both parties are divided within themselves, we also are divided 
in opinion. We shall vote therefore in the choice of representatives and 
other officers according to our individual opinions of their political views 
and their personal character. Divided on other questions, we are united 
in the conviction that the fountain of office and honor should be pure, and 
that the highest office in the country should be filled by a man of abso- 
lutely unsuspected integrity. As there is no distinctive issue upon public 
policy presented for the consideration of the country, the character of the 
candidates becomes of the highest importance with all citizens who do not 
hold that party victory should be secured at any cost. 

While the Republican nomination presents a candidate whom we can- 
not support, the Democratic party presents one whose name is the synonym 
of political courage and honesty and of administrative reform. He has 
discharged every official trust with a sole regard to the public welfare, and 
with a just disregard of mere partisan and personal advantage, which. 
with the applause and confidence of both parties, have raised him from 
the chief executive administration of a great city to that of a great Stale. 
His unreserved, intelligent, and sincere support of reform in the civil 
service has firmly established that reform in the State and cities of New 
York ; and his personal convictions, proved by his official acts more deci- 
sive than any possible platform declarations, are the guarantee that in its 
spirit and in its letter the reform would be enforced in the national admin- 



SSSi ° F CONGRESS 




013 785 iB "" 

istration. His high sense of duty, his absolute and unchallenged omuiai 
integrity, his inflexible courage in resisting party pressure and public 
outcry, his great experience in the details of administration, and his com- 
manding executive ability and independence are precisely the qualities 
which the political situation demands in the chief executive officer of the 
government, to resist corporate monopoly on the one hand and dema- 
gogic communism on the other, and at home and abroad, without menace 
or l car, to protect every right of American citizens and to respect even- 
right of friendly States, by making political morality and private honesty 
the basis of constitutional administration. 

He is a Democrat who is happily free from all association with the 
fierce party differences of the slavery contest, and whose financial views 
are in harmony with those of the best men in both parties ; and, coming 
into public prominence at a time when official purity, courage, and char- 
acter are of chief importance, he presents the qualities and the promise 
which independent voters desire, and which a great body of Republicans, 
believing those qualities to be absolutely indispensable in the administra- 
tion of the government at this time, do not find in the candidate of their 
own party. 

Such independent voters do not propose to ally themselves inextricably 
with any party. Such Republicans do not propose to abandon the Repub- 
lican party nor to merge themselves in any other party ; but they do pro- 
pose to aid in defeating a Republican nomination which, not for reasons 
of expediency only, but for high moral and patriotic considerations, with 
a due regard for the Republican name and for the American character, was 
unfit to be made. They desire not to evade the proper responsibility of 
American citizens by declining to vote, and they desire also to make their 
votes as effective as possible for honest and pure and wise administration. 
How can such voters who at this election cannot conscientiously support 
the Republican candidate promote the objects which they desire to accom- 
plish more surely than by supporting the candidate who represents the 
qualities, the spirit, and the purpose which they all agree in believing to 
be of controlling importance in this election ? No citizen can rightfully 
avoid the issue or refuse to cast his vote. The ballot is a trust. Every 
voter is a trustee for good government, bound to answer to his private 
conscience for his public acts. 

This Conference, therefore, assuming that Republican and independent 
voters, who for any reason cannot sustain the Republican nomination, 
desire to take the course which, under the necessary conditions and con- 
stitutional methods of a Presidential election, will most readily and surely 
secure the result at which they aim, respectfully recommends to all such 
citizens to support the electors who will vote for Grover Cleveland, in 
order most effectually to entorce their conviction that nothing could more 
deeply stain the American name and prove more disastrous to the public 
welfare than the deliberate indifference of the people of the United States 
to increasing public corruption and to the want of official integrity in the 
highest trusts of the government. 



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